So every collector has a 'holy grail" an item that has been eluding them. There have been several for me, Decision for Dusty Fog, The Hardy Boys Survival handbook, The Three Investigators 39 The Case of the Wandering Caveman and The Wild Geese II.
I'd found copies of Daniel Carney's The Wild Geese and The Whispering Death and found a copy of Mike Hoare's Mercenary. I'd found a DVD copy of The Wild Geese and caught The Wild Geese II on pay TV. Hell I'll even count the Marvel New Universe Marc Hazzard: Merc where one of Hazzard's team mentioned that he was involved in the events of The Wild Geese and that Richard Burton was wrong for the part. (The Warhawks series mentioned a Wild Geese mission and the manga Hellsing has a team called the Wild Geese but as I learnt Wild Geese has become a bit of generic term for mercenaries)
But do you think I could find a copy of The Wild Geese II or The Square Circle or The Return of the Wild Geese to give the novel all the titles it's known by. To call the novel a sequel to The Wild Geese in really a misnomer. In the novel there are no characters or references to The Wild Geese. The novel follows a Lebanese mercenary John Haddad in his attempt to free Rudolph Hess from Spandau prison, Haddad is joined by several of his men from the Beirut Civil War.
The movie changes one of his men to Alex Faulkner (Edward Fox) the brother of Alan Faulkner (Richard Burton) from the first movie. The original plan was for Burton to reprise his role but his death forced the recasting,
The book deals with Haddad scouting the rescue and then playing all of the interested parties off of each other - the irony is that he is successful getting Hess out of Spandau but after being locked up for over thirty years all Hess wants to do is return to the cell that has been his home.
I'm glad I found a copy of the book and enjoyed reading it.
